Miscellaneous ramblings of a web developer called David Parkinson. I work full time as a web developer but have interests in other things.
I deal with clients almost everyday, but when they phone up to say they can’t log onto their website once we’ve finished it, the first thing that comes to my mind is that they are typing the address in Google. The first things i ask is how are they trying to access their site and they reply with “through google”. Obviously Google won’t have indexed them yet so i kindly ask the clients to type the address in the address bar at the top of their browser, and they respond with something like “what’s an address bar” or “i can’t see it”. So most of these clients type the address in Google, where they are nowhere to be found.
Anyway, for the clients that don’t know where the address bar is, i assist them and they can finally access their website. Now for the clients that know where the address bar is but don’t know how to use it or don’t want to use it, i kindly ask them why they use Google to get to their website, and they reply with something like “isn’t google the internet?”. I then have to explain to them that Google is a search engine, the most popular search engine, if you want to access a website directly, use the address bar.
I find it amazing how many people think Google is ‘the’ internet. Go and ask 10 people to name a website, i guarantee most of them will respond with ‘Google’.
too true I’ve this has happend to me 5 times in the last year or so.
Yes, as an Internet business owner, I’ve run across this numerous times. I’m still shocked to realize how many people don’t have what I consider a very basic understanding of how to use the Internet. It has sobering implications for anyone with a website — and makes being indexed by search engines, particularly Google, not just important, but absolutely critical. Even more surprising: Even after I explain it, most continue to use Google the same way, as if that address bar at the top of the screen represents some kind of high-tech complexity. It’s as if they had phones but didn’t know how to dial someone without calling information.